A joint venture between Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms and Luxembourg-based SES to provide gigabit fiber internet has received approval from India’s space regulator to operate satellites there, a government executive said.
The three approvals issued to Orbit Connect India — which aims to provide high-speed satellite Internet access — come as companies from Amazon.com to Elon Musk’s Starlink vie for the green light to launch satellite communications services in most of the world’s populous nations.
Authorizations are not previously published. They received them in April and June from India’s National Space Promotion and Authorization Center, known as IN-SPACe. These allow Orbit Connect to operate satellites over India, but additional approvals are required from the country’s telecommunications department to begin operations.
Reliance, which owns Ji, did not respond to an email seeking further details.
Inmarsat, another company hoping to provide high-speed satellite internet, has also received approval to operate satellites over India, IN-SPAC president Pawan Goenka told Reuters. Two other companies have applied, Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon.com’s Kuiper.
Eutelsat’s OneWeb backed by Bharti Enterprises received all approvals late last year.
India’s satellite broadband market is expected to grow 36 percent annually over the next five years to reach $1.9 billion (roughly Rs. 15,875 crore) by 2030, according to consultancy Deloitte.
Globally, the race to connect the rural areas of the world via space internet is accelerating. Amazon plans to invest $10 billion (roughly Rs. 83,553 crore) in Kuiper, which was announced in 2019, the year SpaceX began deploying its first operational Starlink satellites.
Last week, Sri Lanka gave Starlink preliminary approval to provide internet services there.
Goenka said that the more companies involved in the Indian sector, the better off consumers will be.
“Relatively low cost of communication services in India will force global players to drive innovation to reduce their prices,” said Goenka, former managing director of carmaker Mahindra & Mahindra.
“This is already being done in many industries such as automotive, where multinational OEMs have had to innovate to meet Indian consumers’ high-performance, low-cost expectations.”
IN-SPACe will also soon authorize private companies to operate ground stations, he said, which would allow satellite operators to download data as they pass over India.
Prime Minister Modi’s government, which has just won a rare third term, has been pushing the development of India’s space industry.
This year, he opened the door to foreign direct investment in the sector, saying foreign companies can invest in the production of components and systems or subsystems for satellites up to 100 percent without approval.
As a result, investor interest has “increased significantly,” Goenka said.
“Last year, investments in private companies amounted to 2 to 7 million dollars. This year, they are talking about 20 to 30 million dollars,” he said. “The proof of concept happened.”
© Thomson Reuters 2024
